


Gorehound

by JasperIsAFanboy



Series: The Afternoon Light Cuts to Size [20]
Category: Blood Drive (TV)
Genre: Body Horror, Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Gore, M/M, rated for horror themes not nsfw themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-06
Updated: 2018-03-08
Packaged: 2019-03-28 00:47:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13892694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JasperIsAFanboy/pseuds/JasperIsAFanboy
Summary: Or: Rend realizes that he's a small fish in a big pond with one very large shark.





	1. voyeurism with a glass of red rum

**Author's Note:**

> so basically i wanted to scare the shit out of my terrible cannibal oc. it got abt 10x longer than i expected? oops.
> 
> story title and chapter titles refer to/are from the harley poe song.

For the first time in his life, Rend thinks he might actually be happy. He has not regretted joining the road crew of the Blood Drive, though he’s careful to keep well away from the cameras, just in case someone back in Death Valley hacks the Heart feed again and spots him. The last thing he wants is to see a war party on the horizon. It’s everything he’d fantasized about, between the carnage and the intricacies of the engines. There’re even a few men he enjoys admiring; Rib Bone has the kind of stocky muscular build Rend has always aspired towards, and Arthur is definitely easy on the eyes despite his annoyingly sanctimonious idiocy. He still keeps himself at arm’s length, ultimately wired for solitude rather than the trial-by-fire brotherhood of the other roadies; having grown up in the close confines of the War Boys’ compound he’s used to communal living, but the drive from Death Valley to Pixie Swallow gave him a taste for his own company, and he hasn’t gotten sick of himself enough yet to try to make friends.

Nevertheless, he still sometimes lingers when he passes conversations, listening in even if he doesn’t join. He has a surprising and well-cultivated talent for moving quietly and unobtrusively despite his size, and more than once he’s scared the hell out of people just by seeming to appear out of the dust. He almost always just listens. He feels his isolated upbringing with the War Boys very keenly as the others talk about past seasons, the rest of the world, everything and anything that happens outside Death Valley and the race. He’d grown up with the War Boys, and the men in charge had been very, very careful about keeping any outside influence from them so as not to disrupt the cult programming. He has little to contribute to conversations about the world at large, so he decides his best course of action is to just keep quiet. But just outside Salt Lake City, he comes up behind a knot of three roadies talking in hushed whispers. At first he’s indifferent to them and their conversation; he’s on his way to the Chevelle, parked at the edge of the convoy, and he’s far more interested in climbing to the roof to stare at the stars.

“--fuckin’ ate everyone, man!” he hears one of the roadies say. He slows, tilts his head.

“Bullshit,” says a second roadie, a big bear of a ginger man. “That skinny motherfucker? No way. Dude disappears if he turns sideways, no _fuckin’_ _way_ he ate _anyone_ , forget the entire race.”

Rend stops dead. What the fuck.

The first roadie shakes her head. “You weren’t here, man, you didn’t see it,” she says. She reminds Rend of a scorpion, small and quick with a mean gleam in her eye. “You guys only joined up this year. Did you even watch that season?”

“Yeah, but come on, mate,” says a third roadie, this one a wiry twink with a thick Australian accent. “This show gets away with a lot, but there’s no way in hell Rasher turned into a monster and genuinely ate everyone and that’s why it ended the way it did. Something else happened and that was some bullshit Slink pulled out of his ass to cover it up.”

_What_ . The _fuck_.

“The fuck’re you talking about?” Rend asks. Everyone jumps, since once again he’s approached unnoticed.

“Jesus bloody Christ on a pogostick, Rend!” the Australian snaps. “How’s a big bastard like you move so quiet?” Rend turns his one eye on him and shrugs, then looks back to the first.

“You seen much of this show before you joined up?” says the storyteller.

“Bit of the middle of last season,” Rend says. “Not much.” The Imperators found out about the hacked Heart broadcast and shut it down before anyone could watch more than a couple episodes.

“This idiot claims that the season three ending, which had the race abruptly ending because Rasher turned into a monster and ate everyone, was real,” the bear says. “Lucius and I think she’s full of shit.” The Australian twink nods.

Rend stares at them, then looks across the camp. Rasher is directing a group of roadies as they set up the stage. Even with the leather jacket obscuring his lines, Rend can tell Rasher has absolutely no body fat, barely any muscle to look at him. He’s all bones and angles, he looks like a man who lives exclusively on air. As a trans man Rend knows better than most that physical appearances are incredibly deceptive, but Rasher still looks like he’d break in two if you hit him hard enough. Rend looks back to the roadies.

“I’m with him,” he says, gesturing at the bear. He thinks his name is Bjorn, but he’s terrible with names and Indigo introduced him to so many people his first day he could barely remember his own name. “I’m calling bullshit.”

“It’s not!” the storyteller protests. “Look, don’t you know why he wears that corset? Wait, when did you join--”

“I still say it’s gotta be partly a kink thing,” Lucius says. The others stare at him. “What? He’s got a collar and he’s practically attached to Slink’s hip. We know they fuck, you can’t tell me they don’t get up to some weird shit--”

“No, it’s not a kink thing! Well, okay, maybe it’s that too, but it’s actually because he--”

“--Is coming this way,” Rend interrupts. The others jump and turn, and sure enough Rasher’s coming towards them.

“Don’t you assholes have work to do?” he asks when he reaches them.

The three roadies all stammer something and scatter. Rend has already moved into the shadows, started moving when he saw Rasher coming, so he sees Rasher’s slightly confused expression as he counts three people, not four, moving away from him. Rasher’s eyes narrow, but if he spots Rend he gives no sign, and walks off. Rend watches him, then moves off himself. He’s going to keep an eye on Rasher, he decides; if he’s not the only cannibal in this circus, he wants to know where to get meat. He’s definitely with maybe-Bjorn, though. He hasn’t seen any of the third season, true, but there’s no way Rasher turned into a monster, let alone ate the entire race. It was just some kind of television bullshit, the kind of manufactured drama endemic to reality TV everywhere combined with top-notch special effects or creative camera work. Maybe-Bjorn’s got to be right, something else happened and Slink bullshitted his way out of it.

Still, Rend thinks there’s something off about Rasher. He’d seen his eyes when the man hired him, seen their reddish-brown color, like old blood, how blown his pupils were. (The corset doesn’t factor into Rend’s equations, so to speak; after all, someone who put microdermal rings over mastectomy scars on the recommendation of a guy who put rings over a glasgow grin really can’t say a word about other people’s fashion choices.) If there wasn’t something medically wrong there, there was definitely something weird going on. For the first time, he wonders what happened to the cannibal hillbilly truck gang that showed up at the diner. He’d assumed most of them had gone into the engines or into the refrigerated trailer that they kept extra corpses in. Certainly he himself had managed to cadge some of the meat from the diner’s kitchen before setting off, but there’d been a lot of bodies...

Rend’s eye narrows slightly. This is stupid. Rasher’s probably just a bog-standard cannibal like Rend himself, one whose proclivities have been blown wildly out of proportion. Hell, it was probably all an elaborate joke told to new roadies to keep them in line, like the boogeymen tales parents told their children: “Don’t fuck around on the job or Rasher’ll eat you!” In fact, Indigo had said exactly that to him. He’d assumed it was a joke.

Still. Rend didn’t survive a gang of overly straight jocks who were taught to hit first and ask questions never by being complacent, or without cultivating a certain paranoia. And then there’d been that conversation with Indigo while he’d been showing Rend around:

“Oh, just so you know, Rasher gets first pick of corpses,” Indigo had said as they passed a couple of roadies fuelling Rib Bone’s two-ton. “He’s really more our boss than Slink is, so y’know, rank and all that.”

At the time, Rend had been confused, to say the least. What interest did Rasher have in the corpses beyond fuel? Did some corpses make better fuel than others? Indigo hadn’t explained, and Rend hadn’t gotten a chance to ask. The idea that Rasher was actually eating the corpses didn’t occur to him.

He’s definitely going to keep an eye on Rasher.

 

* * *

 

 

“The new guy’s a weirdo,” Rasher remarks to Julian later. Julian just looks at him with his eyebrows raised. He has a point; by Blood Drive standards, Rend is practically suburbia-normal. Sure he’s got so many scars he looks like he was shoved into one of the engines, but other than that, he’s practically unnoticeable amongst the other roadies. He’s good with the engines, asks how high when someone tells him to jump, and has proved just as good at corralling troublemakers and throwing bodies into engines as his muscles suggest. He doesn’t cause trouble, keeps to himself. He’s kind of creepy, with his incredible talent for moving far too quietly for his size, but he’s a bit like a big dog: does what you tell him, when you tell him to do it, then comes back for more orders. He doesn’t talk back. In fact, he barely talks at all, and when he does he uses the bare minimum of words. Best of all, he’s not the least bit squeamish about shoving someone face-first into an engine. 

The last part is what Rasher’s worried about. He watched him the first time Rend had to fuel one of the trucks, the same as he watched all the new hires during their first fueling. Because of his size, he’d been the one to actually stick the body into the engine: some hanger-on that had gotten a little too close to and handsy with Grace and gotten his throat punched in for it. Rend, who was a hand taller and probably twenty or thirty pounds of solid muscle heavier than the groupie, had hauled him up and shoved him into the engine with no more effort or ceremony than if the man had been a sack of potatoes. Fine, all well and good. They don’t have time for squeamishness. Rend had taken a spray of gore right to the face when the body hit the engine’s teeth and hadn’t flinched. Still fine.

But Rasher saw the way his eye lit up, the way his lips twitched and almost curved into a smile. The way he licked the blood from his lips and evidently relished the taste. Even saw him pick a bit of flesh off his eyebrow, glance around to see if he was being watched, and then pop the flesh into his mouth like a piece of candy. He’d missed Rasher in the shadows.

“There’s just something off about him. Wonder if he was one of the cannibal hillbillies,” Rasher muses aloud. “Thought they all got killed, but maybe we missed one.”

“Rasher, dear, you do realize _you_ called someone a weirdo,” Julian says. “While talking to _me._ ” The timing of the conversation is almost hilariously impeccable; if it were happening on camera, someone might call it contrived. Julian is untying Rasher’s corset laces. “Because _you_ think _he_ might be a _cannibal_.”

Rasher shoots him a look. “He’s weird by normal standards, Julian, I do actually remember what those’re like,” he says. “It’s just… have you ever noticed him moving around the camp? No, you haven’t, no one does. He’s creepy. He’s scared the shit out of just about all the other roadies by now. And I saw him the first time he had to shove a body into an engine, he looked like he was about to come.”

“Says the guy who had a boner the morning after eating the entire race.”

“Again, _normal_ standards, Julian! I’m a literal monster! Rend does not have a parasitic extra-dimensional _thing_ stuck to his belly.”

Julian finishes undoing the corset and pulls it away. “Know anything about his past?”

“No. He just showed up back in Pixie Swallow and demanded I hire him.” Rasher turns around as the maw flicks a tentacle or two out, like someone stretching their limbs after sitting in one place for a while. One tentacle reaches out to Julian, who very absently pets it like he would a cat as it twines almost affectionately around his hand. “Half the roadies were dead because of the cannibal hillbillies and he looked competent enough, so I hired him. Honestly, I’d have hired Wile E. fucking Coyote, I was desperate.” He doesn’t expect Julian to get the reference.

“So keep an eye on him, then,” Julian says. Yep, the reference went right over his head. “If he proves to be more trouble than he’s worth, eat him.”

“Believe me, I will.” Rend’s not the most twisted bastard the Blood Drive has ever known (that dubious distinction probably goes to Julian and Rasher), but if Rasher has inadvertently hired a cannibal he’d like to know. There isn’t room for more than one.

Later, Rasher slips out of Julian’s bed and tugs his jeans and boots on, leaving Julian sleeping wrapped around a pillow. He leaves the corset behind. Outside, everything has quieted down, the party done for the night. All the lights are off, even the neon woman atop the Suck Bus. It suits Rasher just fine. He moves quietly through the moon-streaked dark, keeping to the shadows just out of habit even though no one in their right (or wrong) mind would ever try to stop Rasher from doing whatever the hell he wants. He passes the roadies’ trailer and pauses. He lets a tentacle out of the maw, tasting the air like a snake, and moves on. The tentacle confirms what Indigo told him: Rend doesn’t sleep in the trailer with the others.

The maw stirs a little as he nears the refrigerated trailer, opening for a moment and letting out a tentacle in anticipation as he opens the door. He pauses in the moonlight, the skin between his shoulder blades itching. Someone’s watching him. He looks around; even he can’t spot anyone lurking about. He lets out a tentacle again, but the air is too confused with the smell of the corpses in the trailer for him to catch anything. He ducks briefly into the trailer, snags a dismembered torso. He doesn’t want the maw overwhelming him, and feeding it usually keeps it calm. It won’t need a proper feeding for another day or so, thanks to the cannibal hillbillies, but he doesn’t want to take chances. He’s not out for blood. He moves on.

He finds Rend’s Chevelle parked towards the edge of the convoy. The windows are halfway rolled down. There’s no immediate cover; Rend parked it in a relatively open area. If he was trying to minimise places for someone to hide nearby, he did a good job. No one could get closer than about ten or fifteen feet without having to come out in the open. Rasher, however, doesn’t need to get that close to see what he needs to see: Rend in the passenger seat, the back fully reclined, seemingly asleep. He sleeps on his back, head turned to one side and arms crossed over his chest. He has a leather jacket draped over his torso as a blanket. Rasher can see some kind of logo on the back but he can’t make out the details, the angle’s a little wrong and there’s a fold in the middle.

Rasher eyes him a moment longer, then heads back to Julian’s trailer. He shucks his boots and jeans, then gets into bed behind Julian. He presses close to him. It was almost cold outside, and Rasher’s a little chilled. If Julian notices six cold feet of Rasher against his back, he doesn’t seem to react; he mumbles a little, but doesn’t wake. Rasher ducks his head, nuzzles the back of Julian’s neck, then closes his eyes and sleeps.

Back in the Chevelle, Rend’s eye opens wide. He sits up, stares out at the desert night as his jacket falls to his lap. His right hand is clenched around his knife. He’d been lurking around the refrigerated trailer, thinking maybe he could sneak a cut off one of the corpses, when he’d heard footsteps in the dirt. He’d ducked under a trailer, lingered long enough to see if he could spot who else was up and about. To his slight surprise, Rasher had stepped into a shaft of moonlight, heading for the trailer. At first he’d had his back to Rend as he opened the trailer door, but then he turned to look around.

Only the thought of what would happen if he was caught kept Rend silent when he saw Rasher’s torso. He was every bit as bony as Rend had thought, but his belly… god, he practically had _no_ belly, his abdomen hollowed out and black as pitch, like something had taken a massive scoop of his flesh. Even the last third or so of his ribcage was on display, obscenely red and clean of tissue. That hadn’t been the worst of it. Rend had been about to flee when a long split lined with uneven and jagged teeth opened in the center of Rasher’s hollow belly, and a tentacle, an actual honest-to-god fucking _tentacle_ , had emerged and flicked around like a snake’s tongue before retreating back into Rasher. Rend fled as soon as Rasher went into the trailer.

Suddenly the other roadies’ talk of Rasher being a monster didn’t seem so farfetched. What the hell had Rend gotten himself into? Were there any other freaks of nature around? Was someone a werewolf? Or a vampire? What the hell was Rasher, anyway? Was he really even human? What had happened to him? He grips his knife tighter. He knows he hadn’t dreamed it. He’d barked his shin against the doorframe when he clambered blindly into the Chevelle to pretend he was asleep in case Rasher came looking for him, and it’s still throbbing. Rasher had a fucking mouth with tentacles in it on his fucking belly, and he’d gone into the refrigerated trailer where the corpses were. Rend realized what had happened to at least some of the cannibal hillbillies at Pixie Swallow and feels his gorge rise.

It’s only with a supreme effort that he keeps himself from puking. A puddle of vomit near his car would be too suspicious. Besides, he already has a reputation as completely unshockable, and he intends to keep it. And he’s heard roadies that puke for any reason other than actual illness get fed to the engines. He suspects a few have been fed to Rasher, too. Oh, god. So much for his boogeyman idea.

But something about the idea of Rasher consuming live meat rings wrong, somehow. Maybe Rasher isn’t a hunter, just a scavenger. After all, it’s not like Rasher is that intimidating. He doesn’t have the build to be a hunter. Having seen him shirtless now, Rend absolutely thinks Rasher would break in two if he hit him the right way. Just because he has a mouth on his belly doesn’t mean he can hold his own in a fight. Probably doesn’t have to, admittedly, but if worse comes to worst Rend thinks he could destroy him. They’re of a height, but Rend is by far the heavier. He’d bet his blade he outweighs Rasher by a solid fifty or sixty pounds, if not more. Most likely more. And a gay trans man like Rend wouldn’t survive to adulthood among the War Boys without being willing and able to fight hard and dirty. Not of all his kills had been enemies of the War Boys.

He shifts his grip on his knife and lays back down. Violence has always been a comforting thought to him; he’s always been so very good at it. He acquired his taste for blood young. He licks his sharp teeth and bares them in something approaching a grin. He pulls his jacket back over himself and shifts, making himself comfortable, and soon loses himself in dreams of gore.


	2. them sacred triple b's

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's where the gore and body horror tags rly apply cats. they're on par w canon imo. i almost called this chapter 'blood and beast and [boys]' since the original line is 'blood and beast and boobs' and there aren't any boobs in this, but decided against it.

The next morning the roadies get their orders, and Rend finds himself on fuel duty again. He suspects he’ll find himself there more often than not; many of the bigger roadies had been the first to go during the cannibal hillbilly incident. The majority of the remaining roadies are small enough that manhandling a corpse into an engine that might be level with or above their heads  is a difficult feat. Rend, tall and strong, has no trouble. He finds himself working alongside the ginger bear (whose name, it turns out, really is Bjorn).

They’ve gotten a grip on the hollowed-out corpse of one of the former racers, a fat man in an Elvis costume who’d fallen victim to the Pixie Swallow diner. Bjorn grunts as he and Rend haul the corpse up and shove it into the engine of a truck.

“How is it this guy’s missing most of his organs, his head, and his arms and he’s still this fucking heavy?” Bjorn shouts over the sound of the engine reducing the corpse to sludge. He’s stood out of the way so he doesn’t get covered in blood, but Rend of course has no such reservations. His only concession to the mess is to work shirtless. (He’s not sure what’s attracting more stares, his mastectomy scars with their piercings, his build, or the lightning burn.) He glances at Bjorn and shrugs.

“Legs,” he says. “They’re heavy.”

Once the engine quiets, he looks at Bjorn. Of the three he’d spoken to last night, Bjorn had seemed the most down-to-earth. If Rend wants answers he’s probably more likely to get good ones out of Bjorn. “So about Rasher turning into a monster,” he says.

“Oh yeah.” Bjorn nods. “Scary bastard. Seen him without that corset yet?” Rend thinks back to what he saw in the night and almost shudders. Bjorn nods again. “I know that look. Scares the hell out of everyone, the first time they see it.”

“Does he really eat people?”

“Yep.”

“So the third season finale…”

“Well, there’s still some debate. Slink _claims_ it was all legitimate, that Rasher really did turn into a monster and eat everyone except, like, two or three racers and a handful of roadies. The survivors swear he’s right, but they might have been paid off. Lot of people just shrug and move on, figure the actual truth isn’t ever gonna be known and just go with it. Kind of how I feel. Lucius is a skeptic through and through.” Bjorn looks thoughtful as they drag over and haul up another corpse. “Mind you, he really does eat people, so maybe there’s some truth to it…”

Rend doesn’t reply, and Bjorn doesn’t continue the conversation. Rend’s mind is reeling. He hadn’t even thought someone like Rasher was physically possible, let alone something he’d ever encounter. How’d he end up like that? Was he always a cannibal with a mouth in his belly? Then a far greater question occurs to him as he and Bjorn shove the corpse into the engine:

“Where do they _go_?” he muses aloud. (He gets a spray of blood straight in his mouth for the asking.)

Rend decides to step up his creeping around, now that he knows Rasher’s probably keeping an eye on him. He doesn’t know why Rasher bothers; surely it wasn’t that Rasher suspected he’d seen him last night. The fact that he isn’t human isn’t exactly a secret around here, so he can’t be worried about Rend shooting his mouth off about it. Rend even saw him without the corset that very morning, talking to Slink. Is it just that Rasher’s suspicious of him for showing up at Pixie Swallow unharmed? Rend supposes it would look weird, for someone to show up the morning after an attack by a cannibal hillbilly truck gang without so much as a scratch. But how would Rasher know he hadn’t arrived post-attack, unless he saw him pull into the lot before everything went tits up? Rend’s Chevelle is distinctive, but he’d been careful to park away from the crew. Besides, Rend had seen the trucks the cannibal hillbillies were driving, and not even the black-thumbs back in Death Valley would’ve taken them for parts, and they’d take _anything_. They’d have put the trucks out of their misery, most likely. If Rasher thinks Rend would be caught dead amongst a bunch of assholes who couldn’t even care for their cars properly, well, that’s almost insulting.

More than once Rend catches Rasher eyeing him, especially when Rend’s coming in and out of the corpse trailer with bodies for fuel. Maybe he suspects Rend’s a cannibal and is trying to see if he’s stealing meat. He isn’t, and won’t until he thinks Rasher isn’t watching him anymore, but even if he did it’s not like he’d steal an entire corpse. He doesn’t have the space in the Chevelle to store one. He’d only steal a cut off an arm here, a leg there, and not very big ones at that. Besides, Rend has never been compulsive with his cannibalism, only opportunistic; he never shied away from taking chunks off people in fights, but he never sought kills just for food. He’d never have gotten away with it in Death Valley. He can go without as long as he has to, especially since every time he shoves a body into an engine he gets absolutely covered with gore. It’s sufficient for him.

He wonders if Rasher realizes Rend’s watching him. He doesn’t catch him going into the corpse trailer again. So far he’s only seen him directing the roadies and going in and out of Slink’s trailer, but it doesn’t feel like he’s deliberately acting innocent. Rend can’t figure him out.

Then the race arrives at Meadeville.

Meadeville isn’t much, just a few sad neighborhoods, a rather decayed town square with a greasy spoon diner and a tattoo parlor and a pawn shop, and the shell of an old bottling plant. The race parks in the shadow of this last, and its jagged silhouette looms over the Mayhem Party like a sleeping beast. Once everything is set up, Rend finds himself with time on his hands. Back in Salt Lake, he’d sat on top of a trailer and watched the party for a while, nursed a bottle of beer. Somehow it had felt a little too reminiscent of some of the post-raid parties of Death Valley for him to be entirely comfortable being in the crowd. He kept expecting to see Doof and his flamethrower guitar on the stage. Rend is tempted to explore the plant. It’d keep him out of the crowd, if nothing else. He’s about to head for it when he spots Rasher and Slink talking near the edge of the party. He keeps walking, though he angles his path near enough to them to hear their conversation.

“...just be back in time for departure,” he hears Slink say.

“Relax, I wouldn’t leave you to corral the roadies on your own,” Rasher says. “I shouldn’t be more than a few hours anyway.”

“Don’t get something stupid.”

“I’ll get your initials on my ass, how’s that?” Rasher flips Slink off with a grin. Slink cackles and lightly smacks his cheek before heading off. Rasher immediately turns to Rend, who freezes like a deer in the headlights. Shit. Does he know Rend was eavesdropping? “You see the tattoo parlor in town?”

Rend nods.

“Good. Drive me there.” Rasher heads towards the roadies’ cars. After a moment, Rend hesitantly follows.

As he had before, Rend has parked out in the open, rather away from the others. (He’s made sure to park _well_ away from Lucius and Bjorn’s Firebird. Both he and Rasher very carefully keep their eyes off it once they realize all the windows are completely fogged up.) Rend gets in, leans across to open the passenger door from the other side. Rasher slings his lanky body in and brings the seat back up. This close, he looks even more spindly. He rolls the window down, and Rend follows suit. He hates having one window down, it plays havoc with his ears.

It is quite possibly the most awkward drive Rend has ever endured, at least for him; Rasher doesn’t seem bothered at all. It doesn’t help that Rasher’s on his blind side.

“You keep this in good nick,” Rasher remarks eventually.

“Uh. Thanks?” Rend wishes he could see him without turning his head. Why is Rasher here? Why did he ask Rend, of all people, to drive him to the tattoo parlor? It’s not like the party was so far that he couldn’t walk it. Rasher doesn’t reply, so an awkward silence descends on the car.

“You’ve been watching me,” Rasher says as they come up to a red light.

Rend hits the brakes a little too hard, makes the tires chirp. This time he does look at Rasher, opens his mouth. Rasher looks right at him. His eyes look very dark. Rend very suddenly thinks of the maw hidden behind his corset, of the uneven but very sharp teeth within. His own feel inadequate by comparison. He has his knife, strapped to his belt as always, but…

“Relax,” Rasher says, leaning back in his seat again. “I’m used to it. I get it a lot, especially from the new guys, thanks to Julian. I will never not be annoyed about the season three finale. Light’s green, by the way.”

He doesn’t speak again until they get to the parlor. Rend pulls up and puts the Chevelle in neutral. There’re three big Harley-Davidsons parked in front of the parlor, each with iron crosses emblazoned on their saddlebags, and Rasher grimaces slightly when he sees them. He turns to Rend.

“Coming in?” he asks. Rend looks at the bikes and shakes his head. “Fine. Come back in a couple hours.” He gets out of the Chevelle and heads for the parlor. Rend notices his gait’s different: a little less swagger and sway, a little more stiff.

Rend heads for the diner. It looks empty, devoid of customers and evidently waitstaff, though since it claims to be open twenty-four hours Rend hopes there’s someone who can slap together a burger. A bell chimes when he walks in, and a tired-looking older woman comes out of the kitchen. She has a cigarette screwed into the corner of her mouth as if it’s a permanent fixture of her face.

“Sit anywhere,” she says. “Need a menu?”

“Can you do a burger?” Rend asks, sitting near a window that affords him a view of the parlor, in case Rasher turns up early. The waitress nods. “Then I don’t need a menu. Make it bloody.”

The waitress sticks her head into the kitchen and shouts at the still-unseen cook. She eyes Rend as if expecting him to make for the register, but eventually she goes back into the kitchen herself. Rend can’t help remembering Pixie Swallow, wonders if he’ll get another human burger. This place looks desperate enough to be grinding up people instead of beef. But unlike Pixie Swallow it’s mercifully quiet, since Rend is the only customer; they don’t even have a radio. After the hectic noise and organised chaos of the race, it’s a positive balm. Rend almost misses the quiet nights of patrolling the perimeter of the War Boys compound. He’d always been the first to volunteer for night duty, since it kept him away from the others. The waitress delivers his burger and a glass of water with absolutely no fanfare and takes herself off immediately, and Rend is grateful. His burger is not human, sadly, but it’s almost as bloody as the Pixie Swallow burger had been. He eats in comfortable silence, glancing at the tattoo parlor now and again. If the bikers have given Rasher any trouble, there’s no outward sign.

Once he’s finished, he stares idly out the window. In an aesthetically perfect world, it would be raining, he thinks, but this world is far from perfect in any sense, aesthetically or otherwise. A car occasionally rumbles past, usually a broken-down pickup that rattles the windows or a dusty people-carrier. The waitress appears with the check, which Rend pays in silence, and she vanishes again. Rend sits a moment longer, then goes out to the Chevelle. He sits in the passenger seat and opens the glovebox, produces a whetstone and begins sharpening his knife. It’s one of his prized possessions, few as they are, second only to the car in his regard. Once he’s satisfied with the edge (he can shave hair off his arm with it), he puts the whetstone away and lowers the seat somewhat. He watches the tattoo parlor again. Eventually he turns on the radio, listens to a station playing classic rock for a while.

After a time, the door opens and Rasher steps out. He’s gripping his jacket in his hand like he’s trying to strangle it. Rend frowns slightly and gets out of the car. He’s about to go to the driver’s side when the tattoo parlor door opens again and a big man in leather comes striding out after Rasher. There’s murder on his bearded face. Rend smells trouble and doesn’t bother getting in the car. He twists his belt so the knife is in easy reach and starts walking over.

The biker says something to Rasher, who ignores him and keeps walking. The biker takes offense to being ignored.

“I’m talking to you, faggot!” he shouts. Rasher’s shoulders twitch but otherwise he gives no sign he heard. Rend’s frown deepens and he starts to jog. The biker snarls wordlessly and draws a switchblade.

Rend’s eye widens. “Knife!” he shouts. He starts full-on running towards Rasher.

The biker runs forward as well, obviously hoping to knife Rasher in the back, but thanks to Rend’s warning Rasher drops his jacket and jumps out of the way just in the nick of time; the biker’s knife only cuts through part of the corset’s laces. It sags in the front as Rasher turns to face the biker. Rend can see the blade clipped Rasher; there’s a shallow, bleeding cut just above the corset.

Something _growls_ , a low, bassy rumble like a distant diesel engine. The biker stops in his tracks, his expression going from belligerent and pissed to confused. Rend skids to a halt himself. Rasher doesn’t say a word. He reaches around and yanks the severed laces free of the corset, then flings the corset away to reveal the maw. The biker’s expression turns immediately terrified.

“Oh shit, oh fuck!” the biker cries. He drops the knife and sprints back towards the parlor. Rend realizes on a deep, animal level that running was a fatal mistake.

Rasher gives chase. He’s on the biker in a few long strides; he’s got longer legs than the biker, and less weight. Tentacles boil out of the maw and seize the biker, and Rasher kicks him in the back of the knees to bring him down. The biker goes down hard, landing flat on his belly. He screams, a high, panicked, rabbity noise. He screams again when the tentacles tighten and Rasher bends forward. Rend doesn’t see exactly what happens next, but he hears the crunch, hears the way the biker’s screams turn to incoherent gurgles. Rasher is on his hands and knees over the biker. The tentacles draw the biker’s body up towards Rasher, pulling so the body goes head-first, and with a shock of absolute horror Rend realizes what he’s seeing. More crunching noises ensue.

 _But where the fuck is it all going?_ is all Rend’s panicked brain manages to come up with. He slowly edges to one side, some perverse, morbid curiosity driving him to try to see exactly what’s happening.

Rasher’s back looks unnaturally long, his spine unnaturally prominent like it’s going to burst out of his skin. The biker’s body slowly and somewhat jerkily lifts and disappears into the maw, reminding Rend unpleasantly of someone eating a French fry. Blood is falling to the ground in splatters. The door of the parlor opens again, and this time it’s evidently the biker’s friends. Both of them have naked blades in their hands, one a Buck knife like Rend’s and the other a second switchblade. They see the gruesome tableau and cry out in horror. Rasher looks up at them. He stands slowly. The biker’s legs are hanging out of the maw as the tentacles work to shove the body further in, and then they too disappear into the maw.

For a moment everyone stares at each other. Then the bikers turn and pile back into the parlor. Rasher stands still, his shoulders rising and falling like he’s panting. He turns to Rend, who freezes. The tentacles are still writhing and thrashing around, still hanging out of the maw like intestines. Rasher’s eyes catch the light like an animal’s. There’s blood all over his torso, which still looks unnaturally long. His fingers flex and twitch as he walks, long and stained black, tipped with vicious claws. There’s nothing distinctly monstrous about him, which only makes the whole thing worse. Rend wishes he looked _less_ human. It’d be easier to bear, seeing something obviously monstrous, rather than something almost human.

It’s all Rend can do not to run. For all he’d thought himself a predator, he is very, _very_ aware that right now, he’s in the presence of a much greater beast. He’s a house-cat before a lion. Rasher is no scavenger. If Rend runs, Rasher will chase him down. Rend knows this instinctively, would have known it even if he hadn’t seen the biker try to run and be annihilated for it. Just as instinctively he knows that, bigger muscles or not, he is no match for Rasher. He holds his ground, but puts his chin up to bare his throat. It goes against every instinct, every ingrained violent tendency, every time Rend was taught that to surrender was to die and that he must never surrender. But back then he’d only faced men and boys determined to prove that he wasn’t one of them. Rasher is a far greater threat than they had ever been. Though Rend had triumphed then, there is no triumph here, only survival. He knows as surely as breathing that if he fights, he will die. He may yet; Rasher may take his bared throat as an invitation to tear it out.

Rend’s gamble pays off. Rasher’s head tilts slightly, and something in him seems to recede. The tentacles slide back into the maw, but the teeth remain on display as Rasher slowly moves towards Rend. He seems to shrink slightly, as if his torso really had stretched earlier and is now returning to normal. Rend holds death-still. Finally Rasher reaches him, stops barely a foot away from him. Rend still has not moved. The maw has closed.

“I’m impressed,” Rasher says at length. “You didn’t run.”

“You would have killed me if I had,” Rend says. He lowers his head. Rasher shrugs.

“Probably,” he says. “Are you a cannibal?”

The question seems apropos of fucking nothing and takes a moment to sink in. Rend finally nods.

“Thought so. Don’t get greedy,” Rasher says, as if discussing the weather. That seems to be that. He goes to the corset and picks it up, then picks up his jacket. He looks at the severed laces and makes an irritated sound. He shrugs on his jacket, rolls up the corset and tucks it under his arm. He turns back to Rend. “Come on, let’s get back.

He strides off towards the Chevelle. Rend looks for a moment at the puddle of blood that is all that remains of the biker. Then he looks at Rasher, still a human stick insect despite having consumed an entire person.

_What the fuck._

After a moment, Rend follows him.


	3. epilogue: it turns me on when i should grieve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rend and Rasher come back to find they missed a hell of a party.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bonus epilogue! after i finished the other two chapters i got to wondering abt when they get back to find the aftermath of the Sex Zombie Plague. and then dilan told me to write it. so i did.
> 
> chapter title still from harley poe. ngl the fact that this line is from the same song this fic is named after is part of the reason i was so easily convinced to write this epilogue. indigo belongs to d__T.

Rasher thinks Rend might be a little less tense on the drive back from the tattoo parlor. Rend is hard to read, his scarred face is very impassive in the sense that he always looks pissed off no matter what, but he’s not white-knuckling the steering wheel like he was before. Probably it’s because they got some things out in the open: Rasher being a people-eating monster, Rend being a cannibal, the fact that they were both spying on each other. He still doesn’t say much, but that’s normal. He’d hoped he’d be able to at least get Rend to calm the fuck down without Rend seeing him feed, but perhaps it was better this way. Rasher shifts slightly, feels a slight tug on his back from the cut left by the biker’s knife. From the pull he thinks it’s already closed. He heals a lot faster now, thanks to the maw. He’s not as fast as Julian, but he’s far faster than the average human. His tattoos heal in hours, not days. All in all, it could have gone a lot worse. Rasher might have eaten Rend, too, which would have been a pity since Rend’s fairly useful. Or the biker might have gotten a lucky shot and got Rasher in the lung or the neck or someplace equally important.

That biker had glared at him from the minute he stepped into the parlor, his masculinity evidently outraged by the sight of a man in skinny jeans and a corset. Thank God the shop had actual rooms; Rasher’s been in a few that just had an open floor, no real privacy for clients. As long as he and the artist were in the room, the biker couldn’t get at them. But as soon as Rasher was out of the room, the biker lit into him, calling him a faggot and worse. Evidently the biker didn’t watch the race, or he’d have known exactly what was behind Rasher’s corset. Rasher had paid for his ink and left as quickly as he could. He’d expected the biker to follow him out, almost wanted him to. Eating him had been so incredibly satisfying. Plus it saves him the trouble of having to feed the maw sooner rather than later.

And it put Rend in his place. Rasher knows he’d been watching him, knows Rend probably assumed he was a pushover. Rasher pegged Rend right away as the kind of man to whom muscle size mattered. It wouldn’t be the first time Rasher was underestimated by someone twice his weight. He’d half expected Rend to fight, but he’d shown his throat instead. He’d surrendered to the bigger monster. He wasn’t as dumb as he looked.

Still, Rasher’s a _little_ antsy nonetheless. Getting nearly gay-bashed has that effect. He hopes everything’s if not okay, then at least no worse than usual back at the Mayhem Party.

Rend parks in more or less the same place as he’d been in before. Lucius and Bjorn’s Firebird is still fogged up, but through the condensation Rasher can just about see a small orange glow moving back and forth, so they’ve probably finished. The passenger window is cracked very slightly. Rasher smells the distinct aroma of pot as he and Rend pass, but they still don’t look in.

Neither realize anything’s amiss until they’re in the convoy proper. It seems somehow quieter than it should, though the music’s as loud as ever. There’s a musty, briny, sweaty smell on the air, making Rasher wrinkle his nose. They reach the center of the party and stop dead. It’s an absolute fucking mess. Racers and groupies and roadies alike are piled around, most in various stages of undress, several unconscious or dead (some even dismembered), and there’s blood and glowing blue goo _everywhere._ The windows of the Suck Bus are completely drenched in it. All Rend and Rasher can do is stare.

“What the fuck happened?” Rasher finally says.

“Looks like we missed a hell of a party,” Rend says. Rasher stares at him. Was that snark? Did Rend have a sense of humor in there somewhere? Humour seems so unusual on his dour face. But he has a point, they certainly missed _something._

Rasher crouches down next to a puddle of goo. He starts to reach out to put his finger in it, then thinks better of it. He squints at it, realizes the smell is partly coming from the goo. It looks an awful lot like…

“Oh my fucking god,” he says. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding.”

“What?”

“I think this is cum.”

Rend stares at him. “I may not have a dick, but I’m pretty sure cum isn’t blue,” he says.

Rasher stands. “Let’s try to find Slink, see if he knows what the fuck happened.”

“If that’s all cum, I think ‘fuck’ is exactly what happened,” Rend remarks idly. Rasher gives him a dirty look. He almost misses nervous, silent Rend.

They pick their way through the piles of people to the stage and duck behind the curtain. Julian’s nowhere to be seen, but there’s blood on his chair and his hat’s on the floor. Rasher frowns. He brushes past Rend and heads back out, hears Rend’s heavy tread behind him. The blue goo leads into the factory, where they find actual live bodies, all of whom are covered not only in the blue goo but orange goo as well.

“Look,” Rend says, pointing to the base of a concrete pillar.

Slumped there, looking much the worse for wear and seemingly unconscious, is Indigo. He too is nearly naked and covered in goo of both colors. They go over to him, and Rasher kicks his foot. He jerks and groans, clutches his head like he expects it to drop off and roll away. He looks up at Rasher with one eye squeezed shut as if suddenly light-sensitive. Small wonder: his pupils are blown.

“What the fuck happened?” Rasher asks. “Why does it look like a day-glo orgy went on around here?”

“Uh… you know, I’m not really sure. There were these two… a guy and a girl, looked like poster kids for the fifties, they showed up and started kissing everyone…” Indigo scratches his head, grimaces at the amount of goo in his hair. “It was like some kind of sex pollen thing, everyone went nuts. It gets kind of blurry after that. Next thing I know, here I am, covered in this shit, exhausted, and feeling like I need fifty showers. And a brillo pad for my dick.” He notices his dick is practically hanging out and covers it with his hands. He winces. “Actually, I feel like a brillo pad was already used on my dick.”

Rasher and Rend exchange looks.

“Get him upright, get him hydrated,” Rasher says. “Then try to find some roadies that haven’t fucked their brains out, see about trying to clean this shit up. Maybe pry Lucius and Bjorn off each other.” He’s reasonably confident that whatever caused this mess hasn’t affected them, since they were in the Firebird when he and Rend left and everything was normal then. (Or normal by Mayhem Party standards, at least.) “I’m going to keep looking for Slink.”

Rend does not look happy about this. “Can I hose him off first?” he asks.

“I really don’t give a shit.” Rasher flips a hand dismissively at him and heads off. He can practically hear Rend trying to figure out how to get Indigo on his feet without touching him and does not feel bad in the least.

The gooey bodies continue through the halls of the plant, but none of those conscious can tell him what exactly happened or where Julian is. Confusion seems to be one of the aftereffects of the sex pollen (for lack of a better term). Most of the orange goo is concentrated around a large machine that looks suspiciously like one of the blood engines; there’re bloodstained black knee socks and two pairs of shoes stuck in the thresher’s teeth, with two piles of clothes a little further away. In one of the piles is a plaid dress. So much for the mysterious guy and girl Indigo mentioned. One of Julian’s trunks is sitting on the floor. Rasher opens it, but finds it empty. He swears and kicks it. The maw, reacting to his agitation, grumbles and flicks a tentacle out. Where the hell is Slink? If he got killed because of some kind of sex pollen, Rasher’s going to kill him again when he comes back.

Rasher turns and goes back through the plant, goes back to the convoy. He stands by the stage for a moment, considering the mess and reflecting how good it feels to be able to delegate tasks. Blue goo drips off the Suck Bus. Rend and Indigo appear from the direction of the roadies’ trailer, Indigo decidedly less gooey and far more clothed, and they stare at the bus with something like despair on their faces. Lucius and Bjorn approach a moment later, and immediately start arguing with Rend and Indigo. Rasher leaves them to it and goes to Julian’s trailer, deciding if he isn’t there now he will be sooner or later. He opens the door, finds Julian sprawled on the bed with his face in his hands. At the sound of the door opening Julian parts his fingers and peers at Rasher.

“Welcome home,” he says. “How was the tattoo parlor?”

“Fine. I ate a biker,” Rasher says, kicking the door closed behind him. He tosses the corset into a chair. He’ll have to replace the laces before he can wear it again thanks to the asshole biker. He thinks he has a few spares in his own trailer. “What the hell happened around here? I leave for two fucking hours and come back to find everything’s covered in jizz and every _one’s_ either unconscious or dead.”

Julian sits up. “Oh, just a blast from the past,” he says. “Nothing like a few sex zombies to class the place up a little.”

“Sex zombies? What the--”

“Why’d you eat a biker, by the way?” Julian interrupts, speaking over him. “Not going to go on a rampage again, are you?” Rasher stares at him for a moment.

“No,” he says slowly. “He deserved it. He called me a faggot and tried to knife me.”

“Fair enough.” Julian leans back, propping himself on his elbows, and rolls his head back and forth. As he tilts his head away from Rasher, a nicely purpling bruise shows on his jawline. Looking closer, Rasher can see flecks of blood in his beard. The amount of possessive rage he feels at the sight is surprising. Julian is _his_ to mark _._

“Who’d you piss off this time?” Rasher asks. He walks over to Julian, slides his palm over Julian’s cheek affectionately before gripping his hair. Julian hisses faintly and grins. “And why’d you let someone other than me leave a mark on you?”

“Well, _you_ just _had_ to go get ink drilled into your skin, so _I_ had to amuse myself somehow,” Julian replies airily. He traces Rasher’s exposed ribs with his claw ring. “Shouldn’t you be out there cleaning up after the sex zombies?”

Rasher snorts. “Fuck no. Being in charge of the roadies means I can make them do it instead. It’s called delegation.” He pulls Julian’s head back far enough that the tendons of his neck stand out in sharp relief. He spots another bruise under his chin. “Means I get to be in here marking you properly while they’re out there cleaning up sex zombie goo. Which, by the way, I hope you explain because seriously, what the _fuck_.”

Julian snickers like a child who’s just said a naughty word. “You hit the nail on the head, _my dear_ , ‘fuck’ is exactly what happened.” He reaches up and tugs Rasher down by his goatee. “So what’d you get this time? Nothing so tacky as your face, I hope.”

Rasher kneels over him, knees on either side of Julian’s hips. With his free hand he pops the button on his jeans. “Take my pants off and find out.”


End file.
